]]>9. Epiloguehttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/9-epilogue-blurred-boundaries/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:27:52 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4627What would you have chosen to do as a journalist in this situation? Because this case study is intended primarily as a teaching resource, a password is required to view the epilogue. The purpose is to encourage readers to pause and think about how they would resolve the difficulty, before learning how the journalist(s) involved […]

]]>What would you have chosen to do as a journalist in this situation?

Because this case study is intended primarily as a teaching resource, a password is required to view the epilogue. The purpose is to encourage readers to pause and think about how they would resolve the difficulty, before learning how the journalist(s) involved did so.

Password access will be provided to any teacher, or to others for information, with a request that the epilogue not be republished.

]]>8. The decision pointhttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/8-the-decision-point/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:26:47 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4625Given the demands of a digital newsroom, BuzzFeed’s Daro and Strapagiel didn’t have long to decide whether or not they would blur the faces. They debated for about 10 to 15 minutes as Daro filed the story, Strapagiel says. Daro maintained that the partygoers shouldn’t be held responsible for their actions because of their young […]

]]>Given the demands of a digital newsroom, BuzzFeed’s Daro and Strapagiel didn’t have long to decide whether or not they would blur the faces.

They debated for about 10 to 15 minutes as Daro filed the story, Strapagiel says.

Daro maintained that the partygoers shouldn’t be held responsible for their actions because of their young age, while Strapagiel argued that the participants had made deliberate choices about how to behave in public and didn’t need to be protected.

In the absence of clear guidelines and policy, BuzzFeed opted for an ad-hoc decision, based on a “gut check” in the newsroom, Daro says.

]]>7. Public interest / journalistic purposehttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/7-public-interest-journalistic-purpose/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:24:15 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4619Some commentators question whether revealing participants’ faces serves a journalistic purpose. Is there value in showing the faces of individual people who participated in the party? Can the story be told just as well if the participants’ faces are obscured? Does the public value of telling the story outweigh the potential harm to participants? “What’s […]

]]>Some commentators question whether revealing participants’ faces serves a journalistic purpose. Is there value in showing the faces of individual people who participated in the party? Can the story be told just as well if the participants’ faces are obscured? Does the public value of telling the story outweigh the potential harm to participants?

“What’s the journalistic purpose here? To shame a bunch of kids or show that college-educated kids don’t have the cultural sensitivity they should?” Enkin asks. “What’s the consequence of naming and what editorial information does it bring to a person’s understanding of the story? You don’t want to be a nanny and protect people… That’s a balancing act.”

For Turk, the decision to blur or not to blur ultimately comes down to a given news organization’s objective behind publishing the story.

“If the point of the story is to generate a public discussion about this kind of behaviour, then in no way is that story diminished [if the faces are blurred]. If the purpose of the story was to shame the individual students, then revealing who they are would be the issue,” he says. “It’s something that’s happened in a number of universities, so I think the interesting part of the story is the larger discussion.”

On the other hand, if the story was about vandalism, or if the individuals had come out in racist costumes at an alt-right rally, it would be perfectly appropriate to show their faces, Turk says. In those contexts, there’s a specific public interest in disclosing the identity of the offenders.

Crerar points out another way the partygoers’ identities could be in the public interest, even if the participants are not themselves public individuals. “If someone’s wearing a completely offensive costume, that may be some sort of a human rights complaint or an issue for the university,” he says. “There may be a public interest, even if the person is not a public figure.”

For Turk, in the beerfest example, the participants “weren’t trying to make a public statement in a public domain,” he says. “They were participating in a private party.”

While that doesn’t justify their behaviour, Turk stresses, it may change how the media should cover it. If media organizations can tell the story and provoke discussion about a social phenomenon without violating privacy, then they should, he says. To do otherwise would be “gratuitous.”

]]>6. Holding people responsiblehttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/6-holding-people-responsible/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:18:31 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4617Some argue that blurring the faces of the participants is akin to protecting racists, and that publicly shaming these participants is a justified form of deterrence for other potential racists. The Globe and Mail’s Stewart said in an email, “The fact that this was a story in which the visuals were intrinsic, and that the […]

]]>Some argue that blurring the faces of the participants is akin to protecting racists, and that publicly shaming these participants is a justified form of deterrence for other potential racists.

The Globe and Mail’s Stewart said in an email, “The fact that this was a story in which the visuals were intrinsic, and that the controversy centered on a group of mostly white students1The authors of this study can’t confirm whether the participants were all students. All subsequent references to “students” should be taken as the speaker’s own opinion. dressed in the stereotypical garb of other cultures and ethnicities, is a compelling argument for showing faces.”

Vicky Mochama, a Metro Newsnational columnist, adds that it’s important for media outlets to show the face of everyday racism.

A lot of people think of racism as being institutional without any particular faces attached, but this case demonstrates how it operates in everyday life, she says.

“The insidiousness of racism lies in the way it erases its tracks,” Mochama wrote in a column following media coverage of the party. “Suddenly, things with racist overtones may have happened and yet no one is racist.”

Mochama argues that racist individuals need to be held accountable, rather than shielded from scrutiny.

“You cannot necessarily give [the participants] the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t know that what they were up to was racist,” she says. “You can say that it’s their youth that allows them to… make racist jokes, but they still knew that what they were doing was racist.”

“I think [people] should be able make mistakes,” Mochama adds. “They can learn that they made a mistake by way of public accountability.”

Mochama also says that many media organizations are selective in whose identities they shield.

“Often we’re talking about the victims of racial hatred and not necessarily the people who perpetrated it. By blurring the faces of people who are perpetrating it, we are giving them cover that we don’t, as the media, give to their victims.”

BuzzFeed’s Strapagiel raised similar concerns with the costume party.

“Part of me feels like… if you’re young and you screwed up, you deserve a second chance. Maybe you shouldn’t have your face attached to this,” she says. “But… what kind of people get that second chance in the media?”

“There’s also this whole line of thinking around how the media protects people who perpetuate… racist ideas or racism, or bigotry in general. Those people we are protecting are usually white people. I started thinking about how does what we do contribute to that narrative.”

]]>5. Young adults and the right to make mistakeshttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/5-young-adults-and-the-right-to-make-mistakes/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:16:47 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4615For young people growing up in the digital age, the blurring of the boundaries between the private and public realms is more pronounced than it was in the past. “People who spent their college years and high school years before the internet had a lot more freedom and leeway to indulge in the not uncommon […]

]]>For young people growing up in the digital age, the blurring of the boundaries between the private and public realms is more pronounced than it was in the past.

“People who spent their college years and high school years before the internet had a lot more freedom and leeway to indulge in the not uncommon flights of idiocy that everyone goes through when they’re young,” Crerar says. “There wasn’t as much of a risk of it being preserved.”

Now, because of the prevalence of smartphones and social media, there’s a greater risk that there will be “a permanent record of activities that you may not want in the public record when you’re applying for job interviews or when you have grandchildren,” he says.

For Crerar, those of college age—who occupy the “grey zone” where people are not minors but remain youthful—are particularly vulnerable.

The university context is a factor, he says. “A lot of people, during Frosh Week, do silly things under the influence of alcohol and it would be disproportionate to have a permanent record of that.”

CBC’s Esther Enkin agrees. The ombudsman indicates that the context would be different if the participants had been involved in a criminal act that had gone through the court system, which would be part of the public record. She points to CBC policies saying that if the media chooses to identify someone accused of a crime, there’s a “strong obligation” to follow the case until it reaches its final outcome.

Concerns about the blurring of the private and public realms in the social media age have provided some of the impetus behind the legal fight for “the right to be forgotten.”

The “right to be forgotten” is a legal concept enshrined in European human rights law that some commentators suggest may soon find its way to North America. It allows individuals the right to have some degree of control over past events in their lives. Recognizing the long-term effects that news stories can have, it offers the possibility of erasing damaging digital records of an event that is no longer occurring or which is no longer newsworthy.

“You could see why you would like to be able to erase some youthful mistakes that may have been unwise and unduly harsh,” Rogers says.

Ethical questions around how journalists should use images to illustrate a story have become ever more complex in recent decades. Digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and social media has blurred the lines between public and private. Even if a photo is in the public domain, where do journalists’ ethical responsibilities lie? James Turk, director of […]

Ethical questions around how journalists should use images to illustrate a story have become ever more complex in recent decades. Digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and social media has blurred the lines between public and private. Even if a photo is in the public domain, where do journalists’ ethical responsibilities lie?

James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University, says that there are many important questions around privacy in the social media age.

How we can protect the “safe spaces” we need as individuals to develop our ideas, he asks, where we aren’t performing publicly or engaged in public discourse?

“What happens when those kinds of spaces disappear because of how common and ubiquitous recording devices are?” Turk asks. “It’s a far bigger question than just these kids. All of us can appear on social media, be outed in a variety of ways, sometimes quite illegitimately and people’s reputations can be damaged almost irrevocably… How do we undo that damage?

David Crerar, another lawyer whose work focuses on media and defamation, says that media organizations have grown far more aware of their cyber impact than they were a decade ago.

They are more likely now to “recognize the harm that online publication can do to a person for a split second of idiocy,” he says. “You could basically literally ruin a person’s life by running a photograph of them” in certain contexts.

He adds that media organizations increasingly have little to no say over the life of a story once it enters cyberspace. A story can be copied and propagated forever, he says, far beyond the control of any given outlet.

“Traditional media is all too aware that they are not necessarily the main decision-maker or propagator of news these days,” Crerar says.

Over at the BuzzFeed newsroom, Daro had similar concerns about his outlet’s reach. He argued that blurring the photos, despite their prominence on social media, made sense. “Twitter and social media platforms aren’t quite as much of a permanent catalogue as an article that is published on a website that’s maintained,” he says.

But Strapagiel argued that an expectation of privacy didn’t hold in this case. “I think my reasons then were, ‘Why should we [blur]?’ This is public. They made a choice. They put it online. They clearly had no qualms about it then. Why should we have qualms about it for them now?” she says.

Rogers also points out that the photos were of costumes that were likely already public.

“The costumes, they were presumably wearing in the street before they got to the party. That’s not to me highly indicative of a private activity,” Rogers says. “On the other hand, if there were a couple in the corner kissing, that could be at the other end of the line.”

]]>3. A question of policyhttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/3-a-question-of-policy/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:05:13 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4606For outlets that had clear policies and past practices, the decision to blur or not blur was simple. Eric Andrew-Gee reported on the story for the Globe and Mail. When asked about the Globe’s decision to leave the faces unobscured, he surmised in an email, “It’s not our practice to blur photos, so we stuck […]

]]>For outlets that had clear policies and past practices, the decision to blur or not blur was simple.

Eric Andrew-Gee reported on the story for the Globe and Mail. When asked about the Globe’s decision to leave the faces unobscured, he surmised in an email, “It’s not our practice to blur photos, so we stuck with that in this case.” Sinclair Stewart, the Globe’s deputy editor added that, generally speaking, the paper only blurs faces in “exceptional circumstances.”

The Toronto Staralso chose not to blur any faces—in this case, because of the ages of the participants. Though the Star’s public editor was not involved in the decision, in an email, Kathy English recalled being told, “There was little discussion about blurring faces because these students1 The authors of this study can’t confirm whether the participants were all over the legal of 18, or if they were all students. are adults, not minors. That call is in line with Starpolicy.”

On the other hand, CBC blurred the faces. Steve Ladurantaye, then Managing Editor at CBC News, told a complainant that CBC decided to blur the faces in the photos because the individuals were at a private party and they hadn’t broken any laws. He also said there wasn’t sufficient public interest to justify showing the faces, besides shaming the partygoers. The decision is discussed further in a CBC ombudsman review of the complaint from January 2017.

But for BuzzFeed, there was no clear policy or past practice to guide the decision.

The decision is much easier to make when a story is being done on children, Strapagiel says. “Clearly there is something to be said about wanting to keep your child and their image private. And that’s a choice that you can make for young children, but then where’s the line when the child, or the teenager, or the young adult, makes that choice for themselves? That’s where it gets very blurred for me and where I don’t have answers.”

]]>2. Legal considerationshttps://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/2-legal-considerations/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:04:21 +0000http://casestudies.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=4602Brian Rogers, a media lawyer with a focus on libel, privacy and freedom of expression, says the concerns around how to use the photos from the party are mostly ethical considerations. From a legal perspective, he argues, things are much clearer. The subjects in the photographs appear to be deliberately posing, so the photos don’t […]

]]>Brian Rogers, a media lawyer with a focus on libel, privacy and freedom of expression, says the concerns around how to use the photos from the party are mostly ethical considerations. From a legal perspective, he argues, things are much clearer.

The subjects in the photographs appear to be deliberately posing, so the photos don’t seem to have been taken without permission, he says. So, there is no case to be made for a legal infringement on privacy.

By consenting to the photos, the participants should have also reasonably expected that their images would be circulated on social media, Rogers adds. Once the images were made public on social media, the media were free to pick them up and pursue a relevant news story.

“The media obviously is taking them from social media and extending them to a whole new audience, so there is a legal concern over copyright, depending on how the photographs were made available,” Rogers says. But, assuming there are no copyright concerns, he says news outlets are free to use the photos in their coverage of the party.

Rogers also notes that privacy concerns are greater when it comes to those under the age of majority, which is 18 in Ontario. It’s unlikely that anyone attending a university-related event would be under that age, he says. And, in any case, there are no laws requiring a news organization to get permission from anyone before printing photos of minors, Rogers adds.

For Rogers, the more important legal consideration comes down to how those in the photos are characterized. Media organizations could run into defamation problems, he says, if the subjects in the photos dispute how their actions are depicted.

Over at BuzzFeed, Daro’s primary concern was the ethical—not legal—ambiguities in disclosing the identities of the participants. The decision to blur or not blur ultimately hinged on whether it was fair to leave a permanent mark on the reputations of the partygoers—some of whom may have had a lapse in judgement they may later regret.